While attending College at Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff Arizona I met this class mate and she was showing me some photo's of here taking paid customers down a raging river in Colorado. She was a white water guide for Royal Gorge Rafting Company for a summer. I asked her to give me the name and address of the owner. Then I wrote Mark Brown a two page letter on why he should hire me, and he did.

One of the first things I asked Mark when I met him was why did he hire me with no rafting experience? He said because you had no experience is the reason I hired you.  His philosophy was he didn't need to break any bad habits I may have and he could teach me his way.

I had a fantastic summer packed full with adventure and several near misses. I am proud to say that I was the only guide that summer not to have flipped a boat with paying customers.

While in Arizona attending college I was introduced to mountain biking and never looked back. To this day I ride several times a week twelve month a year. Riding the snowmobile trails is smooth, no water or mud hazards, no bugs, you can regulate your temperature and visibility in the woods is great without the leaves on the trees.

Years later I heard of a race through a friend in Alaska called the Susitna 100. It is a 100 mile bike race on the Iditarod Trial that startes in mid  February. I signed up and it was one of the adventures I will never forget. Some things happened during the race that you could never make up.

Extreme fishing has many meanings and I consider catching sea run game fish on a fly rod from either a kayak or a raft extreme. Location plays a part in the word extreme. Several trips to Alaska has been the highlight of my fishing experiences when it comes to back country. Once I stayed on a remote island only accessible by plane then boat, and a second trip only accessible by float plane.

Trip number one was plush for we were staying in a lodge making day trips to remote areas catching five different species of fish. We had a bag lunch and we each had a guide to spot fish for us, release fish, and even untangle our knots on occasion. We did get moved off a river bank into our boat by a grizzly coming up the shore fishing.

Trip number two involved months of planning, purchasing specialty gear, and taking a float plane out of Dillingham Alaska seventy five miles up a river to the head waters. Getting out of the plane into the water and blowing up four rafts with eleven other fisherman and then taking eight days to reach Bristol Bay to be picked up by a float plane and brought back to Dillingham. 

It is what happened during those magical eight days with those eleven fisherman, setting up camp on river bars, cooking meals outside in all kinds of weather that makes one heck of a story.